Montville -- Switching to an independent police department would add about $300,000 to the Montville police department’s budget by 2018, but would bring stability and more grant opportunities to the town, according to a committee charged with evaluating the town’s law enforcement options.

The members of the Montville Law Enforcement Feasibility Committee were asked last year to produce a report on the feasibility and anticipated costs of creating a town-run police force for Montville.

The department is now overseen by state police as part of the Resident State Trooper program.

In its report, released online last week, the committee’s members concluded that transitioning to an independent department is a good idea.

“The committee … unanimously recommends the establishment of a statutorily recognized organized police department managed by a qualified Chief of Police,” they wrote.

The committee, which includes several town residents and a retired state trooper, plans to present its report to the Town Council soon.

The biggest budget increase associated with establishing an independent department would be salaries for several police dispatchers to operate out of the town’s public safety building, according to the report.

The town’s dispatchers, employed by the fire marshal’s office, now handle only fire and medical calls.

The committee estimated that the department would need to hire five police dispatchers at a salary of about $50,000 a year.

The town would save money by hiring a police chief to start taking over for the state trooper in mid-2016, according to the report.

A police chief would make about $100,000 per year, about $75,000 less than the cost of the current resident state trooper program.

The percentage the town pays of the resident state trooper program went up from 70 percent to 85 percent this year.

The numbers are meant to be a rough estimate, Wills Pike, the committee's chairman, said Monday.

“The numbers we used are as best we could do, on the information we had in talking to other police agencies and national resources,” Pike said.

The committee read several previous reports on the subject and consulted with police chiefs and officers from multiple towns and state police.

Hiring a police chief to run the department would have a positive impact on the department’s morale and efficiency, the report said.

“The (resident state trooper) contract does not promote continuity of leadership … whereas the (independent police force) model places a high value on strong, stable leadership in the form of a police chief selected through a rigorous hiring process,” it said.

Running its own department would allow the town to use its underutilized public safety building more efficiently, they said.

It would also provide a “consistent implementation of policies and a clear chain of command,” according to the report, eliminating overlapping or conflicting processes between state and Montville police.

Creating an independent department would also eliminate the need to budget about $180,000 to replace police radios, which the resident state trooper program would require by next year, the report said, and make the town eligible for grants that it can’t get as a participant in the resident state trooper program.

The full report is posted on the town’s website and was distributed to town councilors last week, Pike said.

m.shanahan@theday.com

Twitter: @martha_shan